Discrimination against Non-Western laws

Peter Baofu

Recent events like Google’s complaint about censorship in China, a British woman’s being prosecuted for having illicit sex in Dubai, and a British man’s being convicted of drug smuggling in China had received swift criticisms against the host countries from both governments and mass media in the West.

Yet, what many Western governments and mass media do not want to tell the world is something more troubling, that is, the widespread Western neo-colonial discrimination against non-Western laws — while they strictly expect, as a matter of right, the respect by non-Western nationals and organizations towards Western laws when these non-Western nationals and organizations are in the West.

Inhumane consequence

This widespread Western neo-colonial discrimination has its inhumane consequence for the world. Let me explain this troubling phenomenon below, with the three examples (as cited above) for illustration.

Firstly, in the first example concerning Google’s threat to leave China unless the Chinese Government lifts its censorship (like “filtering” search results) and stops its alleged “cyber attacks” — the mainstream coverage (of this controversy) in Western mass media is more fact-twisting than fact-reporting.

Google is not as innocent as its complaint may sound. Many people do not know that Google has been collaborating for years with “the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies” for global spying, as reported by Steve Watson back in March of 2008. As explained by Watson, “Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new....An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele...elaborated on previous revelations...that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception. Steele named Google’s CIA point man as Dr. Rick Steinheiser, of the Office of Research and Development.”

Closed source database

Steele thus explained: “Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn’t fund what I call the open source world....They’ve been together for quite a while. “More specifically, for Watson, “Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies who are in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.”

By 2007, according to Watson, “new programs of internet monitoring” were created “by a freshly created department branch of Homeland Security [DHS] called the National Applications Office” — and these programs “allow...the DHS to regulate and control access to the internet in the name of ‘protecting’ national security....[And] the NSA has increasing control over SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers. In other words the agency is capable of intercepting and reading...emails and instant messages in real time.”

In 2007, as Watson continued, “US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a ‘walk in the park.’ The plan would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search” for global spying.

Dubious side

The Chinese side seems to be well aware of this dubious side of Google and other related companies doing business in China. For instance, on January 27, 2010, He Jiazheng, the President of People’s Daily Online, revealed, in an article concerning Google, that “the United States...is shifting its strategic focus from the military to the Internet. It is against this backdrop that Google becomes a tool of the country’s Internet hegemony. What makes a multinational company as big as Google intervene in the security and social policies of another sovereign state?

Obviously, the case is not as simple as corporate decision-making of a business, but an act driven by other hidden factors.” In other words, not only “Google has filtered a lot of online posts on the ground that they are of...anti-American rhetoric” but also it has worked together with the U.S. intelligence network for years.

Another recent article in People’s Daily (on January 23, 2010) revealed that the U.S. call for “Internet freedom” is part of its clandestine efforts “to infiltrate China,” with the help of Google and other companies (like “Twitter” and “YouTube,” as cited in the article).

Software ‘bugs’

In 2002, “a CIA Internet spying plot was disclosed by the British media, saying the CIA sought to collect information by breaking into giant companies, banks and governmental organs and organizations across the world. Under the cover of a high-tech civil company, the CIA took cooperated with a software development company in the Silicon Valley to design software ‘bugs’ to collect information via the Internet. The spying software binding with normal software would install automatically once a netizen started to use the normal software,” as pointed out in the same article.

In addition, “according to a Hong Kong media agency, the CIA invests tens of millions of US dollars every year to aid ‘Chinese net traitors’ to infiltrate Chinese net users with US ideology. They haunt major Chinese forums and portals. A website called ‘Wazhe Online’ (Chinese Pinyin) is a secret mission with the cooperation of US Government institutions and overseas ‘Tibetan splittist organizations’ with the tasks of agitating, deluding, infiltrating and instigating Chinese net users, making up rumours to initiate riots and collecting information via the Internet.

A Tibetan youth who once worked with one organization said it is an online spy agency which is supported by the US financially, controlled by the Americans and serves the Americans. A commentary on Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao said those who publish stories sensitive to China’s policies on the net have complex backgrounds and are hired by US and Japanese spy agencies,” as pointed out in the same article.

Therefore, reality is not what Google and the mainstream Western mass media would like us to believe.

Western values

Secondly, in regard to the second example concerning a British woman’s being prosecuted for having illicit sex in Dubai” — the mainstream coverage (of this controversy) in Western mass media continues its spinning against non-Western laws.

For instance, the Economist in the U.K. published an article on January 14, 2010 which condemned the arrest of a “23-year-old British woman” and who “was barred from leaving the country while awaiting trial,” because “on New Year’s Day she told police she had been raped the previous evening by a waiter at a five-star hotel,” and “the police arrested her after she revealed during questioning that she had drunk alcohol and had sex with her fiance, with whom she was on holiday.”

It is well-known that “under sharia law, sex out of wedlock and the drinking of alcohol are illegal” in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as the Economist acknowledged but condemned it anyway. In other words, so the hidden excuse goes, it is not right for a Westerner to get punished for drinking alcohol and have sex out of wedlock in an Islamic country like UAE; Western values are to be respected too, so the excuse goes, because these Westerners are not Arab Muslims and should be treated differently.

Courtesy: Pravda, To be continued